Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In keeping with our theme day today on education, I’d like to talk about inclusive schooling a little bit. Our policy in the Department of Education is to provide inclusive schooling so that children all be taught in the same classroom regardless of any special needs they may have. They attend school and are taught in the same classroom.
I have spoken to this issue in the House before and that is a very noble goal, but if the funding and adequate funding is not available to fund inclusive schooling, the results can be quite dire. The way in which inclusive schooling is funded is through a formula and I believe that that is wrong. I believe that students coming into the school system, either starting off or moving into our school system from another jurisdiction, need to be assessed if they have special needs. If they have special needs then the funding should follow the student through their school career and this will avoid the hit and miss approach we take now.
I hate to see teachers under stress and, unfortunately, what I am hearing from teachers is, when they have one or more special needs students in their classroom and do not have the adequate support from inclusive school funding, the result is unhappy, not only for the special needs student but for the other students in the classroom, as well, and puts an extra strain and stress on the teachers, and it discourages me greatly when I hear of these situations occurring. What it will take from our government is a change in the policy.
The inclusive schooling budget, sadly, was also recently cut, which, if anything, there should be more money going into inclusive schooling and it should be targeted, it should not be done on a formula basis.
There is more funding for inclusive schooling going into some schools that don’t need it and less than what is needed in other schools. So it’s not a good way we are doing it right now, and I will have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment later today in question period on what we are going to do to address this, because I think this is an urgent issue.
I’ve talked to teachers who say that they are under such pressure to meet the varied needs within their classroom that they’re reconsidering a career in teaching. That is not a good thing to hear. Teaching is not an easy career. I admire teachers greatly. I know it is something that I could not do day in and day out. It’s a calling, it’s not a profession, and we need to support our teachers in every way we can. Lack of funding for inclusive schooling is not acceptable. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
